For a long time I'm experiencing rather annoying problem that is most likely caused by AMD Catalyst display driver and AMD HDMI audio driver. It affects Windows 7 x64 SP1 Restart/Shut down cycle and SoundBlaster X-Fi Titanium PCIe card AFTER I wake up Display from sleep mode.

If I set Windows 7 x64 to turn off the display after x minutes of inactivity (Control Panel \ Hardware and Sound \ Power Options \ Turn off the display) system Restart/Shut down times are prolonged and the Creative Audio Control Panel application becomes extremely unresponsive.

I've been in contact with Creative Tech support for over a month. They've recently released a new version of SB X-Fi Titanium driver (XFTI_PCDRV_L11_2_40_0008.exe), but the problem remains the same.

If there's no AMD Catalyst in the system, Creative software for SB X-Fi Titanium isn't affected. Furthermore, Windows 7 Restart/Shut down cycle isn't affected as well. To confirm this, I did the following:

1. After I completely uninstalled AMD Catalyst 13.12 Creative Audio Control Panel (CACP) was no more affected by Display sleep mode bug. After I woke up Display from sleep mode, CACP loaded almost instantly!

Summary: AMD Catalyst display and AMD HDMI audio drivers not only severely affect Creative SB X-Fi Titanium when Display is turned off by the system (graphics card), but also affect System Restart and Shut down cycle. Windows 7 x64 SP1 normally restarts within 15 seconds. If display is turned off at least once, computer needs 45 seconds to restart or shut down!

Well, that did the trick. After I disabled AMD High Definition Audio Device, Display sleep mode no longer affects the system Restart/Shut down cycle nor does it affect Creative Audio Control Panel which opens instantly every time.